


Another Life

by orphan_account



Category: The Get Down (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 20:03:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17689991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: They talk about another life they could live, a new day that they both can finally see. A freedom neither of them could have conjured up in their wildest dreams.





	Another Life

Zeke’s never seen hands quite like Shao’s hands. 

Zeke thinks about it one night when they’re in bed together, when he notices Shao’s hand spread out across his stomach. Deep brown, rough and strong. Deceptively soft and gentle. 

They’re magic. Zeke knows they are. Shao’s got entire universes in his fingertips. Shao could put his finger on a record and expose the symphonies within its groves. Shao could splay his hand across a filthy brick wall and an explosion of sound and color will burst forth, covering all that dingy red and brown with Shao’s intricate brilliance. 

Shao’s hands can carry his body miles and miles away, catapulting him into air and back down again, a string of stars following his body as he lands. 

Shao’s a craftsman, a creator of the most devastating beauty that Zeke’s ever laid eyes on. Shao just never realized it before. Still doesn’t realize it now. 

*

_ Dear Mylene, I think it’s time we were honest with ourselves . . .  _

Zeke broke up with Mylene because he knew she was going to break up with him.

She always did when it came to her career. Not that he could blame her anymore. There’s a whole big, wide world that open for someone as amazing as Mylene. If she’s lucky, she’ll never have to step foot in the Bronx again. 

It didn’t even take Zeke that long to make the decision. He was just sitting in his dorm room one day, curled up on his rickety twin bed when he realized that he and Mylene were over before she ever stepped foot on that plane. 

Zeke just asks that she never forget him. He could never forget the love she gave. 

So he wrote her a letter. Made it as poetic and emotional and tender-hearted as he can, and Zeke mailed it to her with dry eyes. 

Mylene never wrote back to Zeke. And that was just fine with him. 

*

Shao found his birds. Or, he found  _ some  _ birds. He’s built a small sanctuary for them on the roof of their place. Zeke keeps trying to tell him that there is no way that those are the same birds from the old temple in the Bronx, but Shao insists that they are.

“They knew where to find me,” Shao says with a smile. He almost looks like a kid again. 

Shao cradles the birds like small, fragile babies, and they coo and settle into Shao’s hands as if they were home. So Zeke doesn’t push it anymore. 

Zeke is still jittery whenever he holds one of the pigeons. Shao always laughs at him and holds Zeke’s hands while Zeke holds the pigeons. Shao rubs his thumbs on the outsides of Zeke’s hands, and it’s the most soothing feeling Zeke’s ever felt. 

Sometimes, they sit on the roof all night in that position, even after the birds have gone to sleep. They’re doing it tonight: Zeke and Shao, their fingers intertwined, foreheads pressed together like some corny ass old couple. 

Zeke has to work in the store early in the morning, and Shao had planned to hit a house tonight. But they don’t move from the roof. 

*

“Zeke?  _ Ezekiel!  _ ¿Qué pasa mi hijo? What are you doing here?!” 

Zeke had run away--from Yale, from all the whispers that he only got in because Yale needed more Black kids, from maddening, debilitating  _ loneliness _ . Zeke had just thrown his shit into a backpack and got on the first plane back to New York. And then he got his sorry ass on a train back to Bronx.

He went “home.” To Wanda and Leon. And that was a huge fucking mistake, because they spent hours and days and eventually three weeks barking at Zeke about being a failure, about wasting his potential. About what his mother would say. 

“You think she woulda raised a  _ dropout _ ?! ¿Qué te pasa, Ezekiel?” 

And Zeke was  _ tired _ . He was tired of their questions and the look on Wanda’s face and the way Leon smirked and shook his head at Zeke. Like Zeke was just a no-good Negro. Like his father.

So Zeke snapped. He cussed and screamed like some coked-up white boy. He yelled and cussed and shouted, so really it was no surprise when Leon put his hands on Zeke. The surprise was that Zeke hit Leon back, punched him dead in the nose. 

Blood spilled down Leon’s work shirt, and Wanda lost her damn mind. Smacked Zeke into next Tuesday. Thanks to all the adrenaline, Zeke’s face didn’t hurt until much later, when he was literally sitting on a curb outside a bodega. 

To be real, Zeke doesn’t really remember the rest of that night. 

He remembers that he sat on that corner for a long ass time before some wannabe Rasta walked up on him. Zeke remembers that he somehow talked that man into buying Zeke as much liquor as he wants. 

And then Zeke went home with that man, and everything after  _ that  _ is spotty and hazy, shrouded in confusion and shame and smoke from knock-off incenses. 

It definitely wasn’t what Zeke expected. 

On the quiet, scary nights that Zeke actually let his mind wander in that direction, Zeke didn’t imagine his first time having sex with a man would be some random dude he got wasted with. Zeke would try to force himself imagine faceless men. 

Most of the time it worked. But sometimes, Zeke would fail, and he’d see the same dark-skinned face every time. 

*

Shao’s never been violent. Not really. 

Zeke knows what Shao’s done--Zeke will never forget the trembling, the nerve-wrecking sound of Shao’s confessions--but Zeke knows Shao could’ve never been what Annie demanded him to be. Shao was never that good at harming somebody, no matter how badly he wanted to be. 

Real talk: Shao could never fight. Zeke remembers the first night they really met, when Shao pushed and hit and threatened him. Zeke remembers that it never actually hurt; they were like quick rabbit punches against Zeke’s skinny frame. 

Even when Shao held a knife to his throat, Zeke knew that Shao wasn’t going to hurt him, that he  _ couldn’t  _ hurt him. Shao never scared Zeke. He confused him, tantalized him and drove him up the damn wall. But Shao never _ scared _ Zeke. 

His balled up fists look like foreign objects, and guns just look clunky and out of place in his hand. As far as Zeke is concerned, Annie pulled the trigger the night Wolf died, and every night afterwards. Shao’s hands shake too badly to be deadly. 

They both sometimes still hold a gun every now and then: they’re both paranoid as fuck when they hear a loud noise outside of their window. But Shao’s hands still shake. 

The memories of the night they met are actually funny to Zeke now, but Shao doesn’t like it when Zeke reminds him. He’s never quite forgiven himself. There are a lot of things that Shao will never forgive himself for, no matter how much Zeke tries to convince him otherwise. 

Which is sad, because Shao didn’t hesitate to forgive Zeke. 

*

Zeke had wandered to the Kipling's. 

He slept on their couch until he realized that everything was too  _ different _ . Dizzee didn’t live there anymore, and Boo had gotten out of juvie, but he spent more time at wherever Napoleon was staying than he did at his own home. 

It was just Zeke and his pain and self-loathing, and Ra-Ra’s judgement and resentment towards Zeke and the way Zeke allowed a DJ to come into their lives and blow everything up.

“What was the point of all of that  _ bullshit  _ if you were just gonna end up back  _ here _ ?” Ra-Ra asked one night.

And Zeke didn’t have an answer for him, so he ran away from there, too. 

*

Harlem feels different than the Bronx. 

It doesn’t  _ look  _ super different. There’s a lot of abandoned buildings now because the economy went to hell. Lots of mom-and-pop stores. Lots of poor Black people that got left behind by the government’s “progress.” Lots of people just trying to make it. 

But it  _ feels  _ different. More Italian than Puerto Rican. More jazz than hip-hop. Parts of Harlem never got past the Renaissance. That’s a good thing, though. It’s got some of its own culture to hold on to, it’s own version of excellent Black people that the world couldn’t take away. It hasn’t all been sold off or torched to the ground. It’s not all dust or ash just yet. Not like the Bronx. 

Shao likes Harlem. He immediately got comfortable. They moved into their new spot, and Shao had the neighbor girls blushing and old ladies giving him compliments in a few days’ time. He had also cased a bunch of spots  _ and  _ found a corner store that was hiring  in a few days time. Shao works fast. Always has. 

It’s taken Zeke a minute to get used to all of it--to Harlem, to how quickly Shao can make allies that he keeps so many secrets from--but he’s never going to complain. As long as he’s with Shao, he’ll get used to anything. 

*

Zeke didn’t recognize Shao. Not at first.

To be fair, Zeke couldn’t see anybody in that dark ass club. And he was drunk. So it’s not like Zeke was exactly sure-footed. He was just trying to hang out as long as he could before the placed closed. Zeke either needed to stay until sunrise, or find somebody to take him home for a couple of days. 

Zeke had been in the streets for almost three months, and it was getting cold outside again. And he wasn’t very proud to say it, but that time had taught him that there are  _ a lot _ more men who like men out there, who wanna have a boy toy to spend the night with. And Zeke’s big brown eyes, slight frame, and Spanish attracted a lot of those men. 

So there Zeke was, in that club looking for trade who’d keep him from being cold tonight. Drunk off liquor and high off weed because that’s the only way he can do this. And he was wandering around, trying to flirt, when someone touched him. 

Actually, no, someone  _ grabbed him.  _ Held on to Zeke’s arm for dear life. And the hand that grabbed Zeke was so hot and so strong that Zeke couldn’t help but stop dead in his tracks. 

“Yo, who the fuck--?!” Zeke whipped around, fully prepared to swing, and he swears he didn’t realize whose face he was staring at. There was no red, no gold  _ S  _ hanging from the neck. Nothing that looked like Shaolin Fantastic.

And yet, there he was.

“ . . . Books?” 

Shaolin’s voice sounded just the sound as it always had. But he wore all black, and he had shaved his moustache and beard down so that it looked more like peach fuzz than the full beard Zeke had gotten used to. Shaolin looked real  _ young.  _

And Zeke’s heart pounded in his chest, his breath got caught in his throat, and he thought he was going to die of a heart attack. Because there he was, there they  _ both were,  _ and the months that had separated them were so plain to see on both of their faces and their bodies. 

Zeke felt stained as he watched Shao watch him, as he waited for Shao to realize that Zeke’s a broken-down whore now. As he waited for Shao to realize that, between the two of them, Shao was not the one to have turned out to be nothing. 

Shao’s eyes slowly climbed up and down Zeke’s body. Then he peered around the room, as if, just then, he realized that everybody else could see Zeke and him, too. 

“Let’s go,” Shao said it so quietly that Zeke almost thought he was imagining things.

But then Shao took his hand, his grip firm and real. And he led Zeke out of the club. 

**

Shao has scars on chest. They’re four very short, neat straight lines that start at his collarbone and gone all the way down his left pec. They look like an animal very slowly and deliberately scratched him. 

Zeke often catches himself staring at them: weirdly enough, the only time Zeke can really ignore them is when he and Shao are having sex. Every other time, they demand Zeke’s attention, and his fear. 

Zeke had freaked out the first time he saw them. It was the same night that Shao brought him out of that club, when they went back home together. 

“Who did this?” Zeke had demanded, his voice tight. “What happened? Who was it, Shao?” 

And Shao had kept trying to calm Zeke down and saying that it really didn’t matter. They’re  _ old,  _ Zeke. All this shit is old, okay? It don’t matter any more. It doesn’t hurt anymore. 

But Zeke’d kept pushing and pushing until Shao finally admitted that he had done it to himself one night so that he could remember that his body was  _ his.  _ That his life was his, and really, he didn’t have to live it. Not if he didn’t want to. 

“But I’m okay now,” Shao had quickly said when he saw the horror on Zeke’s face. “I swear. I’m okay now.”

And that answer had made Zeke so furious, and sad and sick that he didn’t know what else to do but wrap his arms around Shao and beg Shao to forgive him.  _ Please,  _ Shao. I’m sorry. I’m  _ sorry.  _

Shao had just tucked his head into the crook of Zeke’s neck. He’d breathed in deep. And then he wrapped his arms around Zeke’s scarily-thin body. 

“I got you, Books.” Shao’s voice was muffled by Zeke’s cheap shirt and his own tears. “Aight? I got you.” 

**

Shao’s traded selling drugs for robbing houses, and spinning records for selling them on the street. 

Zeke’s traded his daydreams and fairytales for reality, for spending every second he can wide awake. He’s got a job, and bills to help pay. He’s got a man he wants to take care of.

They’ve both traded fucked-up childhoods for tenuous adulthood. It doesn’t always  _ feel  _ like a fair trade off. But they know it is. 

**

They don’t talk about Annie anymore. She’s gone. That’s all that matters.

They don’t talk about Les Inferno, or Papa Fuerte, or Cadillac anymore. They’re all gone.  

They barely talk about the Kiplings anymore, because now they feel more like a painful memory than real people they once held in their lives. 

They never talk about Mylene. She wouldn’t want them to. 

They talk about their future, since it feels like they might actually have one. 

Shao wants to stop robbing houses one day. He’s never  _ not  _ been on the wrong side of the law before.

“It could fun,” Shao likes to muse. And Zeke always rolls his eyes.

Shao and Zeke would like to keep moving west. Past New York, past Chicago. Maybe even past Los Angeles.

They’d like to do music again, too, one day. The new sound is getting a little old already. Shao and Zeke could change that. 

They talk about another life they could live, a new day that they both can finally see. A freedom neither of them could have conjured up in their wildest dreams. 

*

Zeke likes to look down at Shao’s hands when their fingers are intertwined. Zeke knows he’s never seen anything so beautiful before. And that he never will see anything this beautiful again. 


End file.
